


Counterfeit Heartstrings

by recrudescence



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Accidental Relationship, Anal Sex, Belts, Consensual Kink, Consensual Somnophilia, Drunkenness, M/M, Oral Sex, Original Character Death(s), Rimming, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:36:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The situation was a simple one: Eames botched up a job and needed to stay someplace he wasn’t likely to be found until it all blew over. Then Arthur met him at the airport with a frown and a key and the words, “Don’t make me regret this,” and suddenly everything sprouted several more twists and turns than Eames was expecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of a three-chapter fic that I plan to post throughout the next week or so. As of now, the tags only represent content from the first chapter. I'll update them as I go along, but for anyone who'd like to know in advance what to expect, this fic will eventually be tagged with: Spanking, Somnophilia, Belts, Drunkenness, and Original Character Death(s). It also contains some very frank talk about the less sexy side of getting fucked up the ass (because [this kink meme prompt](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20822.html?thread=51705942#t51705942) made me laugh), but I'm not sure how to tag for that.

The situation was a simple one: Eames botched up a job and needed to stay someplace he wasn’t likely to be found until it all blew over.

Then Arthur met him at the airport with a frown and a key and the words, “Don’t make me regret this,” and suddenly everything sprouted several more twists and turns than Eames was expecting.

“I’m not going to say I told you so,” Arthur said, “but I did.”

“Actually, what you said was, ‘Pick your battles a little more carefully this time,’” Eames huffed, cramming his suitcase into the backseat. “That hardly counts as screaming out a warning about Amarinder being a fucking menace.”

“Well, yeah.” Arthur looked exasperated. “Because every time I try to warn you off anything, you take it as a challenge and do it anyway just to see if you can. It’s like every day is opposite day for you, but that would be ridiculous since we’re not in _fourth fucking grade_.” 

Eames slid into the passenger seat and sulked in a decidedly adult manner for the rest of the trip.

Arthur’s house was modest-sized, a Victorian style affair painted a muted gray-blue that actually had a respectable amount of yard. Ivy crawling up the porch railings, honeysuckle starting to burst into bloom around the dark fence posts. Violets growing wild in the shaded patches back near the toolshed, carpeting the grass with swaths of cool purple. The smell of imminent rainfall and wild sweet onions. It was enough to make Eames believe in fairies. 

“So, Amarinder, huh?” Arthur said, slinging Eames’s duffle over one sharp shoulder. “Do I get to hear the details now?”

Eames wasn’t exactly dying to explain himself, but Arthur hadn’t made fun of him once and there was a key weighing more heavily in his pocket than it rightfully should. “If you must know, he wanted me to extract some formula or other from Gvazava because apparently she happens to be one of his chemist rivals and he just had to know what she was up to. Then she found out about it and offered me double if I’d work for her instead.” 

“And you did.” Arthur’s face wore an expression that was almost unreadable, but Eames had spent years trying to catalogue the nuances of Arthur’s face and was fairly sure he detected a hint of mirth in his eyes. 

“So I did,” he said. “But it turned out Amarinder put her up to it in the first place to see if I could be trusted and they both decided I couldn’t be.” 

Arthur coolly arched an eyebrow, waiting. 

“I also broke his espresso machine,” Eames added, “but that was an honest mistake.

“Nothing about you is honest,” said Arthur. “Your reputation finally caught up with you. I always sort of wondered if that would ever happen.”

“You know, I’ve worked with far too many conniving chemists for it all to be a coincidence. I’m never speaking to another chemist again. Chemistry and forgery just aren’t meant to mix.”

Arthur opened his mouth, no doubt to point out that actually chemicals were an integral part of forging and Eames was a moron. Or maybe that it wasn’t the chemists who were the common variable in all Eames’s problems. Either way, he’d somehow do it sexily because only Arthur could make insults sound like foreplay and then Eames would be at a loss as to whether kissing him or taking him over his knee was more appropriate. So Eames beat him to the punch, gripped him by his belt loops and hauled him closer until they were chest to chest in the middle of Arthur’s hardwood-floored living room. 

“Thank you,” he said quietly, “for letting me stay with you.”

And Arthur only lowered his eyes and shrugged, collar gaping just enough for Eames to make out the dip of his collarbone. “I’ve gotta keep you in line somehow.”

Eames pulled him closer still and kissed him anyway.

\---

Laying low at Arthur’s place had its advantages. It was rent-free, the neighborhood was several shades more placid than anything in Eames’s life had been for the past six weeks, and everything tended to be neat and organized even though Arthur arranged things in the oddest ways and Eames still couldn’t fathom why he kept tomatoes in the freezer or owned two hair straighteners. As far as he knew, Arthur never ate tomatoes on anything and always tended to keep his hair short or gel the life out of it—hell, sometimes he did both at once—rather than flatiron it.

But he let Eames have full run of the kitchen, didn’t seem to mind clearing out the armoire in his home office so Eames could stash his things inside, and he hadn’t uttered a single peep of complaint about Eames essentially invading his life. There was even a pullout sofa, which Eames had yet to utilize even once. That probably helped.

He’d been there four days when Arthur did something so bizarre it made the mysterious tomatoes seem like nothing. One minute, he was uttering soft little moans and sucking on two of Eames’s fingers like he’d never tasted anything more amazing, and the next he was putting a hand on Eames’s wrist when Eames tried to ease one slick fingertip inside him. “It’s a low three tonight, sorry.”

It was such a non sequitur Eames just gaped at him stupidly, distracted by the pink in his cheeks and the way his fringe curled over his brow. “Are you rating my performance?”

“Quit playing dumb.” Arthur propped himself up on his elbows. “You can still blow me, though, that was going really well.”

Eames had faced down entire armies of projections without losing his cool, but Arthur somehow had the ability to make him sputter just by raising an eyebrow. Someday, maybe when he was brave enough to take the plunge and drunk enough not to shy away from the truth, he was going to have to attempt an in-depth analysis of just how that was possible. “What’s that supposed to mean? If I step it up a notch, am I worthy enough to fuck you?”

Arthur blinked, his half-open mouth red as a freshly cut carnation. It would have been enough to make Eames kiss him senseless if he wasn’t preoccupied with being hopelessly confused. “We’ve been over this, that’s not what this is about.”

“We’ve been over nothing,” Eames corrected, “and what’s not what _what_ ’s about?”

Now Arthur was staring at him like he’d just announced he was going to give up dreamsharing and become an alpaca farmer. “Eames, this really isn’t the time. Are you serious?”

“When I say I have no idea what you’re going on about? Deadly.”

“I can’t believe we haven’t had this conversation,” Arthur muttered, seemingly more to himself than to Eames, and flopped back onto the mattress. “ _Really_?” He spent a minute or so just frowning at the ceiling, which gave Eames a stupendous view of his elegant neck, then sat up with a rather martyred-sounding sigh. 

Eames waited to be enlightened, which didn’t happen. Arthur’s cock was just inches away, hard and still damp from his mouth, and it’d be a crying shame to _not_ touch it, but Eames needed a few things cleared up first. “The ceiling isn’t going to give you any answers, love. Which conversation haven’t we had?”

“I’m thinking, shut up. How many times have we…” Arthur did something with one hand that looked a bit like a wanking motion and a bit like he was miming tossing something over his shoulder.

Once again, Eames waited for a little clarification, and once again he got nothing of the sort. He decided to assume Arthur was going for more of a wanking gesture than a throwing-things-over-his-shoulder gesture and answered, “First time was, what, seven months ago? No, eight. Mozambique, after we got paid.”

“Oral doesn’t count.”

“It bloody well counted for me,” Eames said, miffed. He’d made Arthur beg and babble out all kinds of things that night, including a veritable hymn of praise to Eames’s mouth. He still treasured the memory.

“No, it was good. It was really good. Oral just doesn’t count on the Likert scale.”

Surely he hadn’t heard that right. “The Likert scale of _what_?”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Arthur said, and dropped facedown into a pillow.

Eames shrugged to himself, settled on his side, and kissed along the edge of Arthur’s shoulder blade until he decided to stop contemplating self-asphyxiation.

“You know what, this is your fault.” One of Arthur’s fingers jabbed him in the chin. 

“Um,” said Eames.

“You and your mouth,” Arthur amended unhelpfully. “Do you have any idea how much of my life I wasted thinking about your mouth and how I’d never get to experience it firsthand because you were such an asshole?”

“No,” Eames said. “But do go on, this sounds fascinating.” 

“And _then_ , when you finally stopped being an asshole, it’s like I couldn’t stop taking advantage,” Arthur continued, apparently not having heard him. “It’s a problem.”

“Please,” Eames countered automatically, “you were an insufferable prat for at least the first five jobs we worked together. If you’d asked nicely enough, I would’ve gotten you off ages ago just to shut you up.” 

But he was starting to realize Arthur had both a point and a tendency to lose his mind whenever Eames went down on him. It had been that way in Maputo that first time, and in Monte Carlo a month and a half later, then in a hastily booked Los Angeles hotel room after performing an honest to God inception, then after about six glasses of moscato in Yonne…and Toledo, of course, always Toledo. Eames wasn’t sure he’d go so far as to call it a problem, but Arthur definitely had a fixation.

“So I never told you about the scale because we haven’t actually fucked often enough for it to be a thing.” Arthur had turned just enough to nudge his lips against Eames’s jaw, where Eames felt the soft gust of a sigh. “And I know you’re gonna ask me what I’m talking about, but can that wait until morning?”

At first, Eames was prepared to argue him down, but Arthur licked at the pulse point in his neck and swore he’d explain everything the next day since he’d really rather not get into it at the moment. Also, he still kind of wanted to get off, so if Eames wouldn’t mind…

Then he slipped a hand down to Eames’s cock and kissed him again.

Eames never denied having a few fixations of his own.

\---

Arthur made French toast and bacon the next morning, there in his clean little breakfast nook. Eames knew by now that Arthur kept a few different properties for security reasons, but this one had all the earmarks of being the one he came back to the most often. This one, Eames was willing to bet, he thought of as being closest to home. The idea of being in one place long enough to consider it a home of any kind tended to make Eames cagey, but Arthur seemed to navigate his life during off hours with ease. He kept an herb garden out back, for fuck’s sake. If that didn’t scream domesticity, Eames didn’t know what did.

They ate, and Eames rambled on about his plans to explore a few of the art museums since he had a penchant for gravitating towards them no matter which city he was in. They all had _some_ sort of art scene, either with the assistance of or in spite of the resident population of starving student virtuosos. Then Arthur gave him a peck on the cheek, gently hip-checked him in the direction of the sofa, and disappeared upstairs.

When he returned, he handed Eames an index card that bore nothing more than a few neatly highlighted numbers, each of which had a few words written below it.

At the top of the index card, in bold black ink, was the heading “PENETRATIVE SEX.”

Suddenly, the prospect of spending the day sauntering through museums seemed embarrassingly mundane.

“What,” Eames said deliberately, “is this?”

“It’s a modified Likert scale of how likely I am to let you shove blunt objects up my ass.” 

If Eames hadn’t already finished his tea, he would probably be wearing it. “I beg your pardon?”

Arthur gave him a smile that was equal parts cheerful and sadistic. “I came up with it when one of my exes wanted to fuck every single night but didn’t like bottoming. I had to convince him there are some things the human body just isn’t capable of. This was what finally got the point across.”

“Sounds like he was quite a charmer.” Eames flipped the card over, relieved to find the back blank.

“Yeah, I know. But he was scruffy, he had an accent, and he was covered in tattoos. I don’t like to think of myself as having a type, but if I had to narrow it down…”

“You really think I’m scruffy?”

Arthur absently patted him on the knee. “Han Solo was my first childhood crush. Scruffy is good, trust me. Now pay attention. The scale goes up to four. Four means full steam ahead, do whatever you want, I’m good.”

Eames scrutinized the front of the card. “You realize your modified Likert scale is missing a two.” 

“Another ex. Fabio thought having a number two on a scale about gay sex was weird. Fabio had some hangups about dating guys.”

“But he was fine with the scale and didn’t think _that_ was weird?” Eames paused for a beat. “You dated a bloke named _Fabio_?”

“Of course not,” Arthur sniffed. “I just don’t like to use real names when I talk about my exes in case whoever I’m currently dating decides to track them down and kill them or pump them for dirt on me.”

Eames decided to take that as yet another instance of Arthur’s ridiculous organization system. “Has that actually happened?”

“Terrence, two exes after Fabio.” Arthur looked a bit murderous. “Huge dick in every possible way.”

“Does this mean we’re dating?” Eames blurted out, before he had a chance to think better of it.

“It means you’re staying under my roof for the foreseeable future because you pissed off too many people with too much power, which means we will very probably be having sex often enough for this to be a concern.”

It was the most charmingly matter-of-fact admission of intimacy Eames had ever heard and he couldn’t even stop snorting long enough to say so. 

Arthur had already moved on, a perfect businessman in polka-dot boxer briefs. “Next number is three. Since there’s no two, there’s a high three and a low three. High three means things should be all right, just take it slow at first. Low three means I’m gonna need to take care of some things before I let you get that far. And one means—”

“Take care of _what_?”

“Things,” Arthur said witheringly. 

“Indulge me.”

“When do I not do that?” Arthur regarded him, a critical look in his eyes. “Do you ever get fucked?”

“Tried it a bit, wasn’t for me. Why?”

“This would all be so much easier if you did.” 

“ _Things_ , Arthur.”

“Yeah. Things. I might need to wash up. Or shave. Or use that part of my body for the act it’s biologically intended to carry out. Or take an enema—which is fine every now and then, by the way, but if you start expecting me to do it every fucking day then we’re gonna have a problem. Or it could just mean I ate something that probably makes fucking a bad idea.”

Eames picked up his empty mug, tried to take a swallow of tea, then calmly set it back down. “Ah.”

“And one,” Arthur finished demurely, the smug little fucker. “One means no penetration, period. You don’t pass go, you don’t ask me why, you don’t try and get me to give a ballpark estimate of when I’ll be ready because, guess what, sex is not a family road trip and my ass is not the destination and asking if we’re there yet does not actually get you any closer to the goal _or_ make me very likely to put out. Clear?”

This, Eames decided, was really no weirder than Arthur organizing his guns by caliber size. Which was still fairly weird, but thoroughly _Arthur_.

“You,” Eames said, winding an arm around him, “are so incredibly weird.” 

Arthur scooted into his lap. “Thanks.”

He studied the card a bit more, rubbed the back of Arthur’s head through his sleep-tousled hair. “You could just have just done a one, three, and four. That would eliminate the need for a low three and high three. Or maybe a disagree, agree, and either/or.”

“It’s always better to have an even number when you’re assessing states of being,” Arthur said, settling back against Eames’s chest. Eames had a gut feeling this wasn’t the first time he’d had this conversation. “If there’s an odd number, that’s just temptation to gravitate towards the middle, which is less decisive. The guy I started seeing after Fabio worked for the state census bureau; he helped me perfect the final version.”

Eames didn’t want to imagine how many times Arthur had drafted this. “Why would you ever break up with someone like that? He sounds almost as particular as you.” 

Arthur craned his neck enough to look him up and down. “I’m not _that_ particular. And he turned out to have a fiancée.”

“Fuck,” Eames said, combing his fingers through the most egregiously ruffled portion of Arthur’s hair. “You’ve had a horrible track record. Anyone else you want to tell me about?”

“The guy after Terrence could never remember if one was low or high. I had to use sports metaphors. Tight ends, wide receivers, stuff like that. We, ah,” Arthur paused and made a face as if the memory alone was enough to give him the vapors, “we didn’t last that long.”

“The fuck?”

“They’re football positions, Eames,” Arthur sighed. “Oh, excuse me, _American_ football.”

“I thought the porn industry made those up because they needed titles for all those films about locker room orgies. You mean they’re real?” 

Arthur stiffened with almost palpable horror. “There are so many things wrong with you.” His head dropped heavily onto Eames’s shoulder.

“Tight Ends 2 was infinitely better than the original,” Eames mused. “Never saw the third, but I’m sure it exists. I had no idea football was so kinky.”

“Anything sounds kinky when you say it in your voice. Football also has a defensive end, by the way.”

Eames was going to strain something trying not to laugh.

“I seriously don’t understand why this is such a big deal to you,” Arthur complained. “Rugby teams have _hookers_ and you tackle a lot more while wearing a lot less protective gear. Football is fucking dignified compared to that.”

Eames cinched both arms around his waist, gave an experimental squeeze that earned him an elbow in the ribs. “Don’t tell me you were a football player.”

“Cheer captain,” Arthur said glibly, and slapped the index card on the coffee table before sliding out of Eames’s lap and wandering back towards the coffeepot. “Memorize that. I don’t want you carrying it around in your wallet. And I’m not giving this talk again.”

\---

It took Eames another day and a half before he realized Arthur had thrown a hell of a lot of his personal history at him just to go about explaining a frankly ridiculous rating system. Arthur, Eames had noticed, didn’t shatter his painstakingly cultivated international-man-of-mystery veneer for just anyone.

“Huh,” he muttered to himself, and proceeded to drink the rest of Arthur’s apple juice.

When Arthur came back from whichever component of his strictly regimented workout routine he’d been wasting the morning on, Eames pinned him up against the front door and got his first taste of the rating scale in action. He was tasting the sweat-salty skin at the hinge of Arthur’s jaw at the same time, which was several times more interesting, but Arthur kept squirming just out of reach.

“I’m disgusting,” Arthur told him, not all that insistently.

Eames tangled his fingers in his damp hair and seared a line of hard, sucking kisses along the pink skin of his throat. Arthur drew in a sharp breath, so he added one more for good measure. “I’ll deal with it, I promise.”

“Let me get a shower,” Arthur started, like Eames didn’t have every intention of doing things that would make him need a shower all over again anyway. “And then we can—” but he was already kissing Eames back.

Arthur had the sort of body that must have taken ages of dedication, determination, and judiciously applied sorcery to perfect. Eames preferred to think this for a variety of reasons, one of them being that he refused to believe anyone could get an arse that flawless without putting in a phenomenal amount of effort, another being that the two of them had once worked a job in Venice and he’d personally watched Arthur practically make love to enormous servings of gelato every single day and the man _still_ hadn’t gained an ounce. He must have been such a wiry little thing, once upon a time. All that muscle clearly came at the expense of hard work and discipline and Eames wouldn’t be a very good guest at all if he didn’t show any appreciation for his host.

Eames rubbed a hand up the seam of his track pants. “Number.”

“What?” Arthur’s fingers were petting almost tentatively at his nape. 

“Tell me,” Eames said deliberately, “which number you’re on right now.”

“Oh. Ah, high three.” 

Christ, he was actually blushing, like explaining the entire scaling system wasn’t his own fucking idea in the first place. Eames kissed him again, almost disgusted and almost charmed. It was entirely possible Arthur was just still flushed from his workout and Eames was imagining things, but maybe, just maybe, it was also possible Eames had just that much of an effect on him. And that was a very intriguing thought. 

“Brilliant,” Eames murmured. “I can work with that. I can work with that for hours.”

Arthur protested a little longer—something about being sweaty, which didn’t hold water at all since Eames only planned on making him sweat even more—but it didn’t take much more convincing on Eames’s part before he stopped putting up a fuss. The track pants wound up pooled on the floor and Arthur wound up with his head ducked, knees spread, arching and writhing back as Eames worked his fingers into him. In the end, Eames used the pullout sofa for the very first time in order turn him over and fuck him on it. 

Eames had some very strong convictions about rewarding exemplary hospitality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second part of a three-chapter fic that I plan to post throughout the next week or so. As of now, the tags only represent content from the first two chapters. I'll update them as I go along, but for anyone who'd like to know in advance what to expect, this fic will eventually be tagged with: Somnophilia, Belts, Drunkenness, and Original Character Death(s).

A week went by (“I’m gonna start charging rent,” Arthur threatened, and got on his knees before Eames had a chance to laugh himself sick) and then another (“I got bored and planted a few false leads on you,” Arthur said, and disappeared onto the patio before Eames could work out how he was supposed to respond to that and why it suddenly seemed so complicated). 

The longest Eames had ever shared a living space with Arthur was six days, that time in Toledo when they were soaring high on their own success and he’d learned that Arthur wasn’t nearly as sinfully neat as he led everyone to believe. It had been nearly a week of wine and exquisite soreness and cramming as many orgasms as possible into the six-day grace period they had before Arthur needed to leave for his next job. Eames, who didn’t consider himself to have an overabundance of scruples when it came to trading, wouldn’t trade those six days for anything in the world. 

But here, on Arthur’s own ground, with no looming obligations, there was time to learn more than just how far Arthur could bend (impressively) or how many cups of coffee it took for him to become a semi-functional human being (two). 

“How in the world did you come by this place?” Eames asked once, when Arthur was sprawled across his chest and a good three quarters of the bed. It was an impressively sized bed, but Arthur was apparently quadruple jointed in every fucking limb and Eames had long ago given up on making sense of the ways he managed to move.

Arthur grunted and nudged a kiss into the crook of his neck, biting lightly. “I kind of wanted a condo closer to downtown, and before then I was looking at apartments, but that just wasn’t a good idea.”

Eames smoothed a hand down his spine, gripped his arse and teased a finger along the crease of it to just feel him squirm. “Why’s that?”

“Hipsters,” Arthur said immediately, and Eames gave him one last good squeeze before landing a sharp slap on one of his cheeks. 

“That’s a load of shit and you know it. You own too many records and fair trade coffee brands to be bothered by youthful foibles.” He didn’t mention that Arthur could easily pass for the university student he’d never been when his face wasn’t all pinched up and serious. Or that he’d seen him look longingly at food trucks more than once. Suburbia still suited him surprisingly well, but then again Eames’s list of things that _didn’t_ suit Arthur had always been infuriatingly short. 

Arthur was silent, wriggling a bit against him before going so still Eames thought he might have dozed off. “I needed someplace quieter,” he said finally. “And I wanted to be sure I was separated from my neighbors by more than just walls.” 

His back rippled as he shifted to drape more of himself over Eames, head tilting just enough for him to start mouthing at one of Eames’s nipples. Arthur was a runway show in motion when he was dressed, even if he happened to be dressed in sweats and flip-flops, and when he wasn’t dressed at all he never failed to put on a very different kind of show. This time around it involved lowering his lashes and sucking, the soft wet sounds distracting Eames quite effectively from wondering if Arthur was trying to end the conversation or just ready for a second round. Arthur wriggled against him again, teeth scraping his nipple just short of actual pain but just enough to make Eames moan, and damned if that wasn’t Arthur all over.

Eames stroked from the nape of his neck down to the crest of his arse, tracing the redness his palm had left in its wake earlier. Arthur hissed, his cock pulsing against Eames’s hip. “Do that again.” 

This was one thing he never saw the need to argue about, with the possible exception of those times he decided to make Arthur work for it a little more. Eames obligingly spanked him a second time. 

Arthur gave a shudder and practically crooned, his face hot when he pressed it into Eames’s neck, tongue flicking out to greedily lap over the throb of his pulse. “ _Again_ , c’mon.”

“We really need to look into getting you a proper paddle,” Eames murmured, and Arthur trembled exquisitely as his hand clapped down again.

A few more times and Arthur was clutching at the sheets and whatever part of Eames he could. He had scooted up the bed a few inches and his mouth was wet and open against Eames’s own, too uncoordinated for actual kissing. Eames nipped at his lips all the same, gripped his arse and parted him open and felt him jerk forward as if he were trying to rub himself off on Eames’s hip. 

When he let his hand wander low enough to tease a finger against his hole, Arthur gave a needy little gasp at his cheek. “Fuck, do it.”

Slowly, Eames pressed a finger back into him. Arthur was a furnace inside, indecently slick from earlier, opening right up for him like the shameless hussy he was. “Can’t wait to get filled up all over again, can you?” Eames couldn’t resist murmuring at him, and Arthur’s body gave a delightful spasm as Eames slid in a second finger. “You’re so lovely when you beg.”

“I’m not begging. Get moving.” Arthur’s dimples flickered out as he rolled off Eames and tossed a condom at him.

Eames took advantage of the moment to shove a pillow behind his back and sit up against the headboard. “ _You_ get moving,” he shot back automatically, and hauled Arthur into his lap before he had a chance to scoff. Arthur only hummed and obligingly rocked down, legs parted wide, knees pressing into the mattress on either side of Eames’s thighs. 

“I need,” Arthur started, soft and breathless, prone as ever to spouting what Eames supposed was Arthur’s own personal version of begging even though it still sounded more like an order than anything else. His cock rubbed against Eames’s belly, hips jolting even as he slid the condom onto him with deft hands. “I just _need_ it, come on, put it in, just do it.” 

Eames clamped both hands down on his hips to drag him in even closer. Arthur’s body surged forward against his own, his hands fisting in Eames’s hair, nails scraping along his scalp. “Then,” Eames said into his ear, adjusting his hold until he was spreading him wide, letting a fingertip graze the rim of his hole just for the sake of feeling Arthur twitch and try to coax him in, “I suppose you’d better take it.” 

And he guided him down.

“Ah,” Arthur said, sounding quite serene. “Fuck.”

Eames handed control over to him for a little while, content to lazily sit back and watch him work for it. Arthur’s breath rushed out all at once as he sank down, slow and easy, his head falling forward until their foreheads touched. Eames thumbed the sweat from his temples as time went lax and hazy around them, mapped the twin sweeps of his cheekbones and kissed his hot slack mouth until Arthur remembered how to do it back. 

“Fuck,” whispered Arthur again, working him deeper as Eames’s fingers curled against the backs of his thighs. “I can’t—”

“It’s all right,” Eames whispered back, half a kiss and half a promise. “God, you’re fucking incredible.” Arthur never seemed to need reassurance about anything, but he never objected to it when Eames couldn’t help giving it to him all the same. 

He drew the flat of his thumbnail up the underside of Arthur’s cock, kissed the moan from his mouth when Arthur started to say his name but only managed to come up with a tiny desperate whine. “There we are,” Eames soothed him, stroking down his belly. He cinched a slippery hand around him when Arthur swore, slowly brought him to the brink until they were both covered in sweat and Arthur was dripping between his fingers. 

“I…,” Arthur was stuttering, squirming down onto him and trying to fuck his hand at the same time. He seemed incapable of forcing out more than a word at a time and Eames had never had any reservations about lying for a living, but there was no reason to deny that rendering Arthur speechless turned his crank like mad. He couldn’t help giving him another good hard slap with the flat of his free hand, just for the sake of flustering him a little more.

“You _suck_ ,” Arthur spat, flushed and gasp-laughing and gorgeous. Eames only gave him a grin and did it again for good measure, using both hands this time, reveling in it when Arthur cried out and somehow, impossibly, clenched around him even harder. 

Eames couldn’t be sure which of them was making more noise by then and was suddenly thankful for the proximity of Arthur’s neighbors. He ducked and licked along Arthur’s collarbone. “Oh, sweetheart, you’re close, aren’t you?” 

Arthur had braced his palms against the wall and was rutting against Eames’s stomach even though he could have easily taken himself in hand. Disciplined to a fault, even during his downtime. It made Eames want to flip him onto his back, hold down his wrists, and fuck him into the floor.

“Fucking _hell_ , you’re wet,” Eames marveled, half muffled by Arthur’s earlobe between his teeth. And that was what did it, made Arthur convulse and come just a heartbeat after he finally darted a hand down to touch himself, his body contracting around Eames’s cock over and over again as he tipped his face to the ceiling. 

“You still suck,” said Arthur, breath catching as Eames’s fingers stroked along the oversensitive skin of his arse. His hands had dropped to Eames’s shoulder and he looked ready to fall over and pass out, which just wouldn’t do.

“Not finished yet,” Eames reminded him, giving a slow roll of his hips. Arthur’s eyes slid half-closed. 

When Eames actually did maneuver him onto his back, Arthur writhed and cursed and took every last second of it.

They drowsed side by side afterward, in very real danger of falling asleep without Arthur getting his precious shower. Eames didn’t care a whit. “You know, you’re probably the one of the better roommates I could have ended up with.”

Arthur snorted. “Thanks.” Then he jostled Eames out of the way in order to strip the covers back and stretched out happily in a cool, clean portion of the sheets. 

As always, he took up far more space than someone his size rightfully should. But when one of his hands settled in the small of Eames’s back, Eames let it.

 

\---

 

Then Amarinder showed up.

Not literally, not in the flesh, and not until the next afternoon when Arthur was on a Whole Foods expedition and Eames was engrossed in a rousing round of Fruit Ninja. But too close for comfort all the same.

When Eames’s phone rang, he answered it without bothering to look at the number, assuming it would be Arthur asking him to inventory the refrigerator. “I don’t care if there’s a sale on quinoa again, you know very well neither of us is going to eat it.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Amarinder replied calmly, and Eames damn near dropped the thing onto Arthur’s iPad.

“What do you want this time?” he demanded, trying to sound like the epitome of calmness himself and not at all like he was reeling from a double order of what-ifs. 

It had only been by the sheerest chance he hadn’t uttered Arthur’s name when he answered the phone and, in doing so, accidentally given away a very vital clue as to his whereabouts to one of the last people on earth he wanted to know. All because he hadn’t checked to see who was calling, possibly the most amateurish mistake in the book. Chagrin clenched inside him like an icy fist.

“How,” Amarinder practically purred, “do you feel about second chances?”

Eames stole a glance at his forsaken Fruit Ninja level and fleetingly wished it was possible to pelt someone with cantaloupes from halfway across the globe. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“You liked me just fine when I tried to hire you the first time,” Amarinder said, too amiably for Eames to trust a single word. “I’d appreciate it if you took some time away from your quinoa long enough for us to have a talk.”

Politeness from Amarinder could mean anything at this stage in the game. For all Eames knew, he might have Arthur’s lovely little house surrounded by vigilante sharpshooters. Or maybe he was just desperate enough for someone with Eames’s skill set to try negotiating with him again. Either way, he’d somehow gotten hold of a phone number Eames rarely handed out to anyone. 

Eames had as good as drawn him an annotated map straight to Arthur’s door.

“All right.” Eames sighed. “I’m listening.”

 

\---

 

When Arthur found him, Eames was whaling on the heavy bag in his garage.

“You’re gonna split your knuckles,” he said, peering at Eames from over by the weight bench.

Eames ignored him and swiped the sweat from his eyes.

“I have hand wraps, you know,” Arthur added.

Eames pretended not to hear.

“Hey, I’m _talking_ to you, asshole.”

Eames didn’t look up. Approximately ten seconds later, every light in the garage went out.

“The fuck are you doing?” Eames demanded, aiming a final blind shot at the bag in sheer frustration. He couldn’t hear a thing save the heaving of his own breath and the thump of his heartbeat in his ears. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out the shadowy shape of Arthur near the fuse box. “Would it kill you to let me vent my frustrations in peace?”

“I guess not,” Arthur said, not remotely apologetic. “But it might kill you. What happened, did you forget the Netflix password?”

“Oh, much worse. The power went out before I could catch up on Toddlers and Tiaras.”

The lights flared back to life. Arthur was staring daggers at him. Eames let him look his fill--he was shirtless and sweat-stained, which had a history of distracting Arthur like a charm. Then again, luck hadn’t been on his side all day and probably wasn’t about to change now. 

“Eames, stop flexing and cut the crap.” 

Definitely not changing.

Eames sighed. The pain in his knuckles seemed to skyrocket all at once. “Amarinder got my number and we’re both fucked,” he admitted at last. “You might need to move.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. “We can’t be that fucked if all you’re doing is pouting in the garage. What does he want?”

“Six months pro bono. Anything he needs, I provide it. Any compounds I need, I buy from him exclusively. And after I’ve satisfied his fucking trial period, if he thinks I’ve redeemed myself, then we’re square.” 

Laying it all on the table like that sent a sour stab of shame into the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t prepared for Arthur to scoff and shake his head. “Really, that’s it? That’s nothing. He should have demanded at least a year. _I_ would have.” 

“Well, I’m glad one of us is seeing the humor in this situation,” Eames said, looking balefully at the heavy bag. “Cheers.”

“This could be a good thing, come on. Amarinder’s not a bad ally to have. And if he’s willing to negotiate, that just means he thinks you’re worth keeping around.” Arthur crossed the garage and none too subtly started steering him towards the door. “He’s also a dick, yeah, but you can’t tell me you don’t see where he’s coming from.”

“He’s already sent me a list of driver’s licenses, passports, and accompanying visas he wants. And he says he’s heard I’m not bad at poker chips, which means I’m going to be painting bits of plastic until my fingers fall off. I think he’s planning on buying off every potential partner in crime he meets for the next decade. I’d swear he’s got six months worth of work laid out already.” 

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you became a thief.”

“This is the most degrading bargain I’ve ever heard of,” Eames complained.

“You did break his espresso machine,” Arthur reminded him. “And please, you’ve degraded yourself way more for way less.”

“I’m essentially agreeing to be his kept boy, only without any perks.”

“Which makes that a really bad comparison,” Arthur pointed out, heartless. “Besides, you’re already _my_ kept boy.”

Eames cracked a smile in spite of himself. “Darling.” 

Arthur shooed him back into the house. “It’s not like he wants you to reproduce the Mona Lisa. And I thought you liked working with your hands.”

For someone supposedly at the top of his game, Arthur sometimes had an embarrassing amount of trouble grasping just what other people’s work entailed. Once, Eames had tried to explain that professional forging was just a tad more involved than vanity Photoshopping and he’d ended up wanting to hang himself from the ceiling fan. “Not the point. Look. He’s got my location, which means I can’t use this fucking phone right now. And you’re not safe here.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Arthur wandered into the kitchen and started rummaging around, chucking a plastic container of crimini mushrooms on the counter and seeming entirely unconcerned about anything unrelated to dinner.

“Because for all I know he could change his mind, track me here, and decide to blow me off the face of the earth?”

From behind the freezer door, Arthur gave a snort before setting some ice-packed shrimp beside the mushrooms. “And at least a couple dozen extractors would kick his ass for taking out such a hot commodity.”

Eames pressed up behind him, delighted. “Did you just _commodify_ me?” 

“Forgers are very sought after,” Arthur said flatly. “That’s all the ego-stroking you’re getting. And do you really want to nitpick shit like this after telling me you think someone might raze my fucking house?”

“Technically, I never--” Eames began, unable to help himself, but Arthur was already twisting out of his arms in order to turn and glare at him. Eames gently caught him by the shoulder. “I won’t be going back to London just yet. Too many people know I’ve a place there. And he knows I’ve been in Mombasa as well, so that’s right out. But I’ll be in touch regardless, understand?” 

There was no point skirting the issue since Arthur had to have put two and two together and realized he’d be losing a houseguest. “It’ll be nice to have the place to yourself again, I imagine,” Eames said, most likely sounding imbecilic, but he bloody well wasn’t going to say that he had spent almost the entirety of Amarinder’s phone conversation standing in front of Arthur’s gun safe with a Beretta in his hand. Just in case. When he was young and untried, Eames had stabbed enough backs to learn the perils of being stabbed in return, and he’d still never quite outgrown the habit of playing with fire just to see if he could get away with it.

“Don’t go anywhere yet.” Arthur gave him a warning look and shoved a cutting board at him. “Keep yourself busy. I have to do some work.”

Eames contemplated a few different ways one could go about weaponizing a cutting board should the need arise, which swiftly turned into contemplating all manner of terrible things, like Amarinder changing his mind and hiring shock troops to turn Arthur’s house into a smoking crater edged with bone fragments and singed violets. “Did you even hear me? He knows where I am, which means you’re at risk. Living dangerously is all well and good, but I’m not actually _trying_ to bring chaos raining down on you.” 

Then Arthur’s fingers were sliding into his hair and Arthur’s mouth was on his own in a slow, soft, very thorough entreaty to shut up already. “Eames. Let me _work_.” His palm was cool against Eames’s cheek. “Don’t go anywhere.”

And he disappeared up the stairs, leaving Eames with a cutting board in one hand and the ingredients for dinner scattered across the countertops. “Fuck,” Eames muttered, and reached for the shrimp. 

Sometimes Arthur was too clever for his own good. He was right, Eames did like doing things with his hands. And since the absolute last thing he felt like doing was starting on Amarinder’s list of demands, he started chopping an onion just for the sake of letting his eyes water and using it as an excuse to feel sorry for himself. Peeling and deveining the shrimp wasn’t quite as therapeutic as beating the stuffing out of a punching bag, but it worked well enough. Eames threw himself into the task like dutiful house-husband and inhaled a solitary meal while watching a rerun of Criminal Minds with the sound high enough to prevent him from pricking up his ears at any intriguing noises from upstairs.

Not that there were any. Whatever Arthur had gotten himself up to, it seemed to involve holing up in his office and being very quiet. When he finally emerged Eames only quirked an eyebrow, proffered a lukewarm plate, and waited.

“No one’s gonna bother you as long as you stick to your agreement this time,” Arthur declared, taking the remote and Eames’s spot on the sofa in one fell swoop. “Just don’t try to play Amarinder again.”

It took a few more fruitless brow lifts and hand gestures before Eames realized Arthur really, truly wasn’t going to talk about whatever it was he’d done. Arthur with his blacked-out past and nebulous future and relentless resistance to parting with any information that didn’t suit him; Eames should have expected nothing else. “Point made. Now what?” 

Arthur smiled wanly and accepted a fork. “I don’t know about you, but I really need a drink.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently one week-ish and one more chapter actually means two weeks-ish and two more chapters, but it's done! Thanks for your patience.

Arthur didn’t typically get smashed.

Tipsy, yes. Loose-limbed and loose-inhibitioned, yes. But Eames had only seen him falling-down drunk once, in Toledo, where he’d seen a lot of things he hadn’t expected to see from Arthur.

Then the two of them went out to celebrate Arthur’s mysterious negotiations and Eames not having to flee the country.

And Arthur got himself smashed.

It happened slowly, a steady accumulation of whiskey sours and Arthur’s t-shirt riding up his middle whenever he stretched his arms over his head. Eames could almost have written it off as happenstance if Arthur hadn’t caught him taking in the sight and flashed a devious little grin. “Want me to take it off?” 

Eames smirked. “Easy there. Save it for later.”

They were already a few rounds in and he was feeling like more of a kept boy than ever. Arthur had recently had a payment come in for a job he’d tied up a couple days prior, something neat and remote involving exchanging a few names and locations and sought-after tidbits of information for a fairly sizable sum, and he insisted on paying for everything. Combined with the congeniality of the past few weeks and whatever the fuck he’d been up to in his office earlier, it was enough to have Eames more than a little suspicious. 

“You’ve been ridiculously nice to me lately,” Eames said. “Why do I have the feeling you’re going to want to collect something in return?”

Arthur shrugged and leaned his elbows on the table. “Maybe I am. Or maybe you’re so used to fucking people over you just can’t understand why anyone would ever be nice to you without an ulterior motive. You’ve led a troubled life, Mr. Eames.”

“And you’re not exactly known for being a nice person. There’s _always_ an ulterior motive.” 

“If I tell you my ulterior motive is in your pants,” Arthur said, all innocence, “will you change the subject?”

Eames munched a handful of oversalted almonds and let Arthur pick the rest of the cashews out of the bowl between them. “If I must.”

The memory blindsided him out of nowhere. Months ago, both of them wrapped in the twofold haze of Spanish fog and too many tequila shots. Arthur with his hair loose and his tie loose, laughing and letting Eames toss bits of bar snacks into his open mouth before he took Eames’s face between his hands and kissed him. His fingers soft against Eames’s hairline and his tongue tracing his ear, eyes devilish as he slipped one leg between Eames’s thighs on the patio of a shadow-swathed pub. One thing had led to another, which led to them toppling into a hotel suite together and promptly passing out. Tangled around each other, fully dressed aside from Eames’s shoes and Arthur’s belt. 

Once Eames was awake enough to wield a toothbrush and Arthur had pulled through his hangover, they’d spent the next week getting utterly lost in each other, living on room service and scarcely coming up for air. 

Eames chucked one of his almonds in Arthur’s direction just for the hell of it. “Remember Toledo?” 

Six days they’d been there and they’d wrung every hour dry, then plunged into dreamscapes to stretch the time out even longer. Both of them aching for more but not physically capable of doing anything about it, Eames sprawled across the foot of the bed with Arthur sore and smirking beside him. Then Arthur had sauntered stark naked across the room, bent over like the tart he was, and pulled out the PASIV. Eames had dreamed them into a nightclub just for the fun of fucking Arthur over one of the tables in plain sight of everyone. No condom, since Eames firmly believed in letting his subconscious and not-so-subconscious indulgences run free when he wasn’t dreaming for pay, and he’d licked him out right after, stroked his fingers back inside and lapped up the insides of his thighs until they were shaking. 

Later, he had ended up holding Arthur open in the shower and eating him out in real life just as slowly and teasingly as he had in the dream, making good on his promise to have Arthur coming from nothing but his tongue inside him. He’d replayed the memory of it more times that he could count, the way Arthur’s cries had mingled with the spray from the showerhead when he crumpled against the tiled wall and finally came.

If Arthur was replaying any memories of his own, his face gave away nothing. “Refill,” he announced abruptly, and disappeared before Eames had a chance to try and flag down a server. 

When he came back, it was with drinks in both hands and an expression as sphinxlike as before. “Drink up. I got you another vodka tonic.” Arthur placed a glass in front of him and gave a quick caress to his nape once his hand was free, a daredevilish touch that sent fire streaking through Eames’s veins when it slipped down his open collar just long enough for Arthur’s fingertips to skim against a nipple. 

“Wanker,” Eames murmured, reaching to catch his wrist, but Arthur only withdrew his hand and settled back his seat, the perfect little gentleman once more. 

For a lazy stretch of time they sat in silence, nursing their drinks and watching as what appeared to be a bachelorette party tottered onto the tiny dance floor. Eames’s hand settled on top of Arthur’s knee under the table.

“Yeah,” Arthur said at last. “I remember.”

“Shame it only lasted those six days before that job of yours threw a spanner in the works.”

Arthur downed the second half of his whiskey sour. “I didn’t really have another job, you know.”

Eames gave his knee a gentle squeeze. “Then why did you leave?”

“If you’d ever spent six days in a hotel room with yourself, you’d understand,” Arthur said, which made no sense whatsoever. Then he slid into Eames’s lap and proceeded to steal a kiss and the rest of his vodka tonic.

Eames’s hand reached to cradle his hip automatically, nudging the hem of his shirt up in the process. “Hang about, what brought this on?” 

Arthur’s only answer entailed sighing and shifting to try and urge his touch lower. Eames chuckled against his ear and slipped a hand beneath his shirt, petting his stomach and drinking in the heat of Arthur’s skin under his palm. Thanks to the bachelorette party going on, he wasn’t overly concerned about anyone noticing Arthur’s sudden inability to keep it in his pants, but it wouldn’t do to press their luck. “We ought to get you home, love.”

“Mm. Still thirsty,” Arthur said stubbornly. 

Ignoring his better judgment the way he so often did when Arthur was around, Eames cupped him through his jeans. “Oh, I’ll just bet you are.” He rubbed the heel of his hand along the swell of Arthur’s cock, pressed a damp kiss behind his ear and prayed it was too dim for anyone in the bar to spare them a glance. Arthur’s breath gave a hitch in response. “But I imagine you’ll be coming in your pants before I can even buy another round, won’t you? Shooting off like a schoolboy just from thinking about having a finger or two inside you again.” 

Arthur’s lips parted slickly against the corner of Eames’s mouth, arse grinding down on his thigh. Eames couldn’t resist gripping the hard ridge of his cock just once more. “And that just can’t happen because then you’ll be pissy about making a mess of yourself. No arguments. Come on.” 

“You’re the most terrible person I know, I swear,” Arthur hissed. All the same, he refused to let Eames peel him off his lap until he’d ordered another drink.

\---

And of course, since Arthur could be a perfectly terrible person in his own right, he decided to rain all over Eames’s parade less than five minutes after they stumbled through the front door. It started off promisingly enough: he had Eames pinned against the wall, mouthing at the crook of his neck and doing unseemly things with his hips as Eames palmed his arse through his jeans. Then Arthur slapped his hands away and took a shaky step back in order to strip off in record time, leaving his clothes in a pile that one of them was probably going to trip over in the morning.

Maneuvering him upstairs came at the expense of three stinging bite marks on Eames’s shoulders and two small framed pictures of some unidentifiable city skyline. Arthur sagged against him once they finally made it into bed, nosing in for an off-kilter kiss. “’m tired.”

Eames laid him out and kissed his mouth, his nipples, ran a hand down his smooth stomach until his thumb brushed the trail of hair below the navel, thoughtfully rubbed back and forth there for a bit. Arthur was already arching up for him, effortlessly responsive as he sighed Eames’s name against cheek. “God, I want you so fucking much. I’d put you on a portico if I could.”

Eames snorted. “Thank you, I think. You mean a pedestal?”

“Sure, that too.” For a few blissful seconds, Arthur’s legs locked around his waist, his cock pressing damp and hot against Eames’s stomach. Then he yawned in Eames’s face and went slack against the mattress. “Night.”

That made Eames furrow his brow a bit. “Darling--”

“Don’t fucking _darling_ me,” Arthur muttered, nose wrinkling when Eames drew a fingernail down the crease of his thigh. “One. This is what a one looks like. Nothing in my mouth, nothing in my ass, and if you get me off or come on me then you clean me up.”

Smashed and sleepy and still crystal clear. Eames should have expected nothing less.

He gave the corner of his jaw a nip. “Is this all right?”

“Just don’t wake me up.”

Shifting lower on the bed, Eames bent and carefully took him into his mouth for a moment. “And this?”

Arthur only hummed and stretched. “‘s nice. See you in the morning.” 

They had tried this before, once. Eames had been under while Arthur went down on him topside, and it had been like dying in slow motion. Eames was still a little surprised Arthur had agreed to it at all. It had been during their stay in Yonne, the result of Eames musing, “I always wondered what it would be like...” and Arthur very logically asking what if he didn’t have to wonder anymore. Eames still loved needling him for being unimaginative, but Arthur could actually be a very creative thinker when he put his mind to it.

Eames shook off the rest of his clothes and laid out beside him until his breathing leveled out, one hand threading its way into Arthur’s still mostly slicked-down hair. When he finally leaned in and kissed him, it was more of a test than anything else. Kissing, after all, wasn’t nearly as fun without a responsive partner. 

Arthur’s lips were warm and soft, but he didn’t move a muscle. 

Eames let his touch rove lower, trailing down along the hollow of Arthur’s collarbone with the pads of two fingers, then tracing them in slow circles around one of his nipples. When he pressed his mouth there, Arthur shifted slightly but didn’t open his eyes. Eames waited, stroked low on his stomach, and sucked carefully, teasing both nipples into hard points that left the skin flushed and swollen. Arthur uttered a soft sigh without opening his eyes, but once again settled back down when Eames rubbed his belly. His cock was half-hard, precome starting to gather at the tip. Getting wet from it, just from Eames licking and nuzzling at him almost chastely. Eames was more transfixed by that than he expected. He mouthed softly at the cut of his hip, watched the jump of muscles under his skin, tongued along the join of his thigh until Arthur was spreading them even in his sleep, more pliant and trusting than he ever was while awake. 

Alcohol and indulgence made him lose track of time, measuring it out instead in the way Arthur shifted minutely under his touches. His mouth had fallen open a bit, pink and lax. Eames licked the wetness from the head of his cock, cupped his balls in hand, dimly aware that his erection was trapped against Arthur’s thigh. It would be the simplest thing in the world to suck a finger and slowly slip it into him, easing in so gradually Arthur would never realize it, would only squirm and clench so perfectly for him and never have a clue. 

But he’d agreed to Arthur’s terms and, generally speaking, Eames kept his promises when Arthur was involved. It was almost naïve of Arthur to assume he was as good as his word, although Arthur had been on the wrong side of the law too long to have any lingering naïveté. 

So instead Eames laid his cheek against his breastbone, running his hands up Arthur’s smooth flanks and letting his nails catch ever so slightly. He carefully put his mouth over him and sucked, slow and easy, until his jaw ached and his cock ached. 

Arthur’s breathing had gone deep and languorous by the time he pulled off. His cock was nearly flush with his stomach and he squirmed a bit when Eames rubbed up the underside with the very tip of one finger. His hands and mouth relearned the lines and arches of Arthur’s jawbone, his ribs, the kneecaps he’d seen shatter a dozen times when they dreamed their way into disaster. The skull he’d put bullets in, seen Arthur put bullets in, seen crushed by projections and collapsing dreams alike. He’d seen Arthur die what felt like a thousand terrible times in Toledo, and hadn’t been able to sequester him in a hotel room fast enough when it was all finally over. Eames with a fresh wound in his bicep and Arthur, soused to the gills, sloppy with his kisses and sloppier still with his words, saying _I need it, I need you, you can’t go anywhere_. But then Arthur had been the one to leave, six long days later, and Eames had seen neither hide nor hair of him for nearly two months. 

Again, Arthur stretched, his body forming a sleek effortless arc before relaxing into the bedding once more. Eames thought of gently turning him over to kiss his back, part his cheeks just to trace a finger over his hole and watch him sleepily spread his legs for more, bite his thighs and leave marks behind. He could imagine Arthur gasping into the pillows, unconsciously grinding against the covers to try and make himself come in his sleep, but there was a fair chance Arthur would wake up with Eames manhandled him that much. As much as it pained Eames to go without giving Arthur’s arse the attention it deserved, he held off. 

When he came, it was with his lip between his teeth and his cock in his fist. Even though the urge to fall over and sleep like the dead was overwhelming, he managed to stay awake long enough to give Arthur a quick wipedown where he’d come over him. There was really no point in denying Arthur had him wrapped around his deadly little pinky. The fact that Eames didn’t even feel a need to unwrap himself in a fit of panic, that was something he could deny a little longer.

\---

In the morning, he woke to the sensation of Arthur mapping the whorl of scar tissue on his thigh.

“You’re up,” Arthur noted, turning over. Aside from some frankly ridiculous bed-head, he didn’t look at all like he’d been drunk off his face the night before. “Was it good for you?”

Eames swatted at him. “Very funny. Do I get breakfast in bed now?”

“Nope,” Arthur said cheerfully. “This is your regularly scheduled reminder that if you don’t like the room service here, there are still a lot of hotels in the world. You could just stay in one until things cool down.”

“Indeed there are. So why aren’t I?”

“Told you, someone’s gotta keep an eye on you,” Arthur harrumphed, and then he was yawning so widely Eames could practically see his tonsils and nuzzling back into his pillow like a fretful kitten. 

Eames would let all his fingernails be yanked out rather than make that comparison out loud, but when he bent close and kissed Arthur’s brow he could swear he heard him purr.


	4. Chapter 4

Arthur wasn’t avoiding him. 

That would be ridiculous, they were essentially living together. He was certainly going out of his way to give them time apart, though, Eames had cottoned on to that much. 

In the space of a week, Arthur had suddenly taken up hot yoga, joined a book club, started training to become a volunteer firearm safety instructor, and was constantly blockading himself in his office for some reason or other. It was a bit too much of a coincidence for Eames to swallow.

Left to his own devices, Eames put together the storage cabinet Arthur had bought for his records, then moved the records themselves while taking great pains to keep from getting them out of order. He reorganized the kitchen since Arthur had been making noise about needing to get around to it. He snooped on the fringes of current dreamshare heists and fretted about the state of his career. And, finally, he decided to bite the bullet and try to make a dent in Amarinder’s demands.

Of course, this was exactly when Arthur decided to start making himself mildly accessible again. Eames was out shopping for a scanner, since Arthur for some reason didn’t own one, when Arthur sent him a text that consisted of only one thing.

“You have got to be bloody joking,” Eames muttered, staring down at the number four.

By the time he made it back to Arthur’s place, it appeared Arthur had gotten bored and was stretched out facedown on his bed--which had been feeling an awful lot like _their_ bed, and there was a thought Eames was determined to keep right on circumventing forever--wearing nothing but a towel. Damp hair starting to dry into waves, sunlight caressing the dip at the base of his back, phone glued to his ear.

“What,” Eames said, staring. He’d planned on ribbing Arthur about needing to upgrade his sexting skills, but all that seemed vastly unimportant now.

“I’m on hold. Harvey’s got his architect on the other line. He needs a second opinion.”

Arthur was still talking, presumably detailing just what this second opinion was on, but it could have involved custard pie and Shor's algorithm and a carload of kittens for all Eames cared. Something about Arthur in a towel made most of his thought processes sputter out.

“I thought you weren’t going to work while you were here.”

“This isn’t work,” Arthur said earnestly. “This is fun. And I get to mentor the up and coming point people of tomorrow.”

Eames rolled his eyes and set about working his towel off, stroking over the curve of his arse once it was bared. “You make me cut short my errands because you want a bit of fun and now you’re doing business, also for fun. I don’t understand you.”

“This won’t take long. Did you buy anything more interesting than a scanner?”

“I did. It should be getting dropped off sometime tomorrow, by the way, so don’t turn the hose on any deliveries.” Eames rummaged through his bags, discarded the shaving cream and sensitive-teeth toothpaste, and produced the belt he’d bought on an impulse.

Arthur’s eyes went a little hooded.

“Ah,” Eames said slowly, letting himself preen a bit. “I thought you might approve.”

Granted, he’d expected Arthur to approve solely on a sartorial scale because Ferragamo was Ferragamo and Arthur was predictable beyond belief sometimes. Eames made a mental note to stop underestimating Arthur’s capacity to surprise him. Then, with great deliberation, he slipped off the belt he was wearing. It was older, more worn in than the new one, and he doubled it up without glancing away from Arthur for an instant, drew it taut between both hands with a snap like a gunshot. 

Arthur was looking at him with flushed cheeks and arched brows. Eames swallowed and halfheartedly tried to hold back his smirk.

“Still at a four?” Eames asked, cresting a thumb over his arse, along one of the dimples at the base of his back.

Arthur nodded.

“Still on hold?”

Another nod.

“I’m starting to think,” Eames mused, leaning in until his lips were brushing Arthur’s ear, “that maybe you should speak to Harvey some other time.”

Without batting an eye, Arthur turned off his phone and set it aside.

Eames’s cock went from pressing slightly against his flies to full-on aching in record time. “Yes. Right. Good.” 

He took a seat on the edge of the bed and then Arthur was on him, naked and eager, his arms winding around Eames’s neck and mouth slanting over Eames’s own. The contrast alone was enough to make Eames’s mind blur; he was still completely clothed, while Arthur was bare and graceful and whipcord-strong against him. 

“Not my back or anything, okay?” Arthur said, rolling his hips lightly against his thigh. “And no blood. Can’t get into it and you know it’s a bitch to wash out of the sheets.”

“Understood. And you, you give me a one if it hurts too much or even if it doesn’t.” He’d had no trouble raising a hand to Arthur since the first time Arthur rolled onto all fours and commanded him to do it, but this was different. This was stepping onto ground so new he was waiting for it to crumble out from under him.

“Yeah, fine,” Arthur muttered, lashes lowering as Eames’s hand wrapped around him. “And no making it last all night, either. Just because you _can_ doesn’t mean you should.” Eames smoothed down his spine and whatever else he had to say tapered off rather quickly.

“Also understood.” Eames gave his prick a long, slow stroke and then released him. “Up on your knees, love.”

It took his breath away every time, watching Arthur slide into position with his arms folded beneath his head and his arse in the air. And every time, a captious little voice in the most cynical portion of his psyche demanded to know how many other lovers had seen him this way, how often Arthur had let himself be laid out like this for another. That just wouldn’t do.

Eames surveyed him, hefted the belt, and laid a quick clean blow across his arse before he could overthink anything.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Arthur gritted.

Arthur wasn’t exactly deathly pale, but his skin took on color so easily, pinkness lingering long after each time Eames finished with him. For now, it was still unmarked aside from what was starting to bloom into an obscene red stripe.

Eames did it again.

“Fuck,” gasped Arthur. “Jesus.” His voice cracked.

Eames stopped himself on the backswing, listening to the harshness of his own breathing and waiting for Arthur to call him off. 

“What the fuck,” Arthur said calmly, “are you waiting for? I’m not holding this pose all day.”

Eames knew a cue when he heard one and he obeyed it to the letter, until Arthur was rocking forward and crying out with every blow. 

“You like that?” he demanded, partly for the hell of winding him up and partly to be sure Arthur was still with him.

“Yeah,” Arthur panted.

His arse was bright red, all marked up in a way Eames’s hand alone had never quite done. When Eames trailed the his nails lightly over the weals he’d left behind, Arthur shuddered and hissed but didn’t say a word. Eames let his touch trail even lower, ready to tease him open and maybe lay on a little dirty talk just for the hell of it, and Arthur squirmed again, made his finger slip down and ever so slightly _in_. 

Slick. Arthur was _slick_ there.

This was beyond ridiculous. Eames was going to have a fucking heart attack and Arthur was probably going raise him as a zombie just to rake him over the coals for not getting him off first.

“You really couldn’t make yourself wait, could you?” Eames said softly. Arthur’s breath caught as he slid his finger in the rest of the way. Eames dropped the belt, reached around Arthur’s hip to give his prick a few good hard jerks. “Did you get off on it, just thinking about having a cock in your tight little arsehole?”

“Might’ve,” Arthur shot back.

Eames crooked his finger.

“ _Yes_ , okay?” Arthur yelped. “Are you gonna do me one better or just sit there?” 

“Christ, Arthur.” Eames couldn’t hold back a groan of his own. Just the fact that Arthur had been _waiting_ for him like this, neatly toweled up but already wet and worked open for him...Eames definitely needed to revise his thoughts on Arthur’s predictability. 

His hands were clumsy with his shirt, clumsier still working his trousers open, but not so much that they had any trouble resettling on Arthur’s hips and easing his cheeks apart. And Eames leaned in, pressed his tongue against the little clutch of muscle there, and licked into him. 

Arthur moaned quietly, tremulous little spasms rocking through his body with each push of Eames’s tongue inside. Eames could have spent hours like this, rimming Arthur until he came undone and his own jaw was throbbing from eating him out, but there was only so much he could do with his mouth at a given time. “How hard did you do it?” Eames demanded, voice rough. 

Arthur made a small sound of loss, then whimpered when Eames eased a finger back into him. “Did you fuck yourself open while you waited for me to come back?” 

“Just in the shower, just a little,” Arthur admitted in a rush, and then cried out when Eames flitted his tongue against him once more. “Quit teasing, just give me your cock, come _on_.”

Images flared bright and lewd in Eames’s mind as he grappled with a condom wrapper--Arthur teasing himself and thinking of something bigger, Arthur resolutely making a business call just after making his own stodgy version of a booty call, Arthur stretching out in bed wanting more than anything to bring himself off but forcing himself to keep his hands off his cock and just _wait_. “Don’t say I never listened to you,” Eames murmured, pressing a kiss to his shoulder and then pressing inside him.

He fucked him facedown like that, hard and brutal and without bothering to use more than a single finger on him beforehand. Arthur pushed back against him and begged so sweetly for it, no words required. And when Eames came first, Arthur was the one who gave a full-body shiver and moaned like a porn star. Eames mumbled nonsense into his hair, rasped his chin against Arthur’s shoulder blade, marking him just that much more. 

Arthur whined when he pulled out, tensing from head to heels to try and keep him from moving. “No, don’t, _Eames_. I’m really close, just a little more.”

“Not yet, sweetheart. I want to make you last a little longer. You don’t mind, do you?” Eames toyed a fingertip against the rim of his hole, then dipped two inside him to the second knuckle. Arthur tensed and cursed and whimpered all at once, beautifully undone. “Look at you. Just a greedy little hole for me to play with.”

Arthur let himself be turned over, the better for Eames to stroke him and lick up the smears of precome on his belly. By the time he’d finished teasing at the peaks of his nipples until they were stiff and swollen, Arthur was writhing where he lay, arse rubbing against the covers even though it had to be at least a little painful. Then he took Eames’s face between his hands and breathed _please_ like it was a love confession.

Eames licked up the length of his cock, took him in slow and deep. “Eames,” Arthur was gasping. Not—I want you to—fuck,” and by the time Eames guided his knees apart and fucked into him with three fingers, Arthur was all out of words. 

When Eames blinked sweat from his eyes and relaxed his throat, Arthur came almost instantly, squeezing tight and silk-smooth around him, his hands twisting into the sheets 

Once or twice, Eames thought he heard him choking out _I’m sorry_ , of all things.

Eames didn’t plan on asking why. He let Arthur come back down, smoothed his hair and kissed his cheek, rummaged through the nightstand until he found a bottle of lotion. Then, when Arthur was smiling dopily and seemed ready to drift off, he ventured, “You don’t normally get out much when you’re here, do you?” 

After he’d first arrived, Eames had spent a fair amount of time wondering if Arthur had friends, hobbies, things he did for fun that weren’t solitary activities or actually business-related. Lately that had turned into wondering if maybe he’d only started up with the yoga and the book club because Eames was getting under his skin and making him stir-crazy. Arthur had never been too polite to give himself room when he needed it.

“I could compose a sonnet about all the ways you’re being a pain in the ass right now,” Arthur grumbled, smothering a yawn against his shoulder.

“Your talents are legion,” Eames said brightly. He trailed a hand up and down Arthur’s back for a long while, listening to his breathing even out. “That night you made me devein shrimp,” he finally asked, “what did you do?”

But Arthur either slept or pretended to.

\---

 

Catching Arthur with his guard down was the sort of thing for which plenty of people in dreamsharing had paid dearly. Eames only had to wait until he was worn out from mowing the lawn. 

“I could take a turn if you want,” he offered, not actually meaning it. He also offered to pour a pitcher of lemonade on him in slow motion, which seemed far more fun even though it only made Arthur grimace. But he did come inside and kiss him before making a beeline for the refrigerator and a ponderously enormous glass of water.

Eames went straight for the throat. “Do you have an answer for me yet?” 

And there it was, a flicker of recognition in Arthur’s eyes. Eames leaned against the kitchen island and waited. 

As he’d hoped, Arthur was too dignified to try and play dumb at this point. “Can’t you just believe I did something for you out of the goodness of my heart? It’s your own fucking fault for not just working for Amarinder on good faith.”

“Right,” Eames scoffed. “Funny, that. The last time I tried working a job on good faith was with this bloke named Cobb. Maybe you you’ve heard of him.” He dropped a quick kiss against Arthur’s sweaty nape, inhaling the summery scent of newly cut grass.

“Oh _Christ_ ,” Arthur groaned. “Can we not--”

“I could have turned Cobb in easily and it wouldn’t have been any skin off my nose,” Eames interrupted. “The only reason I didn’t was because the inception was your job too.”

Arthur stalked over to the sofa and slumped onto it. “Yeah. I know.”

“Then Cobb turned around and fucked us all. Yusuf turned around and fucked us all. Saito could have had all our heads on a platter for what we did to him. Ariadne knew more about Cobb’s demons than any of us and didn’t breathe a word about them. For once, the only one who didn’t make any sort of misstep was me, and you’ll note that trying to be loyal didn’t do any good.”

“I was loyal,” Arthur said quietly.

Eames slid an arm around him and pressed his lips to his temple. “Of course. You’re always loyal. It’s the rest of the world that’s the problem.” 

Very carefully, Arthur set his water on the coffee table. “Okay, look. I had to negotiate with Gvazava and agree to be on the next team she assembles. I told her you and Amarinder had a deal and you were actually keeping it this time. She laughed her ass off, _but_ she also said she’d make sure to keep him in line if I keep you in line. That’s all.”

“You wanted me around that badly?”

Arthur shoved himself to his feet, tension in his jaw. “I got you blacklisted. I didn’t mean to.”

Eames eyed him, trying to ignore the seed of trepidation taking root in his stomach. “I highly doubt you had a thing to do with any of this.” But when he reached to catch hold of his arm, Arthur only shook him off.

“Amarinder was trying to round out a team. I wasn’t free, but we got to know each other some when we worked the Garrison job together. He asked me for advice. So I told him to work with a trusted colleague as a tactic once he found someone he thought he might be interested in hiring.” 

“I’m not following.”

“I said if he wanted to make sure a team member could be trusted, he should have a friend make a counteroffer and see if they took it. When he had Gvazava try to hire you, that’s exactly what happened. I never thought it would be you. If I had, I would’ve tipped you off and told you not to. I should have.”

Eames frowned at him, poleaxed. Methodical Arthur, burning bridges and expectations with deadly precision. “You’re right, you should have.”

“I didn’t realize you were the one Amarinder was planning on working with,” said Arthur. He sank back down, leaning his elbows on his knees and resolutely gazing at a grass stain on his knuckles. “I should have kept track of you.” 

The apprehension that had taken root in Eames’s stomach earlier flared into full bloom. “So you don’t trust me on my own. I see.” 

Arthur cut him a narrow look. “I trust you most when I can see you.”

“Right, and that’s such a drastic improvement. You don't think I can fend for myself without you looking after me, do I have that right?”

“That's not what I said,” Arthur snapped. “What the fuck are you trying to tell me here? First it's ‘you should have warned me’ then it's ‘you shouldn't be keeping tabs on me.’”

“No, it’s realizing you’ve only been hosting me out of pity and whatever fucked up sense of obligation you’re hanging onto. Thanks, Arthur, much appreciated.”

Arthur faced him grimly. “Are you done now?” 

“Oh, are you asking for my input now?” Eames said, knowing damn well how childish he was being. “You didn’t want to decide that for me along with everything else? Because that--” 

“Let me tell you something,” Arthur said abruptly. “My first place, after I got out of the army and started taking commissions, was an apartment in Chicago. There was this old couple who lived next door, the Perrings. I wasn’t there a lot, so I didn’t know much about them, but they’d tell me about their grandkids and take in my mail when I was away. Stuff like that.”

Eames pressed his lips together and waited.

“I was young,” Arthur continued, like he still wasn’t. “I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. I didn’t cover my tracks. You don’t just walk away from something like extraction, but back then I really thought I could.” 

His fingers were drumming against his knee, four muted taps in rapid succession. Eames had half a mind to reach out and grip his hand, but didn’t. 

“They found my place and they tore it apart. The walls weren’t that thick.” He picked up his glass, took a long drink, and set it back down. “I wasn’t there. The guy who lived on the other side of me wasn’t home either, but the Perrings--they were. Like I said, I was stupid.” 

“We’re all stupid when we first start off,” murmured Eames.

Arthur didn’t look at him. “They evacuated the whole building so they could check for explosives.” His voice was determinedly devoid of emotion. “They ripped everything apart because of a cocky twenty-one-year-old kid who didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into. I remember when I heard about it and my old CO was ordering me not to go back but I blew him off since I wasn’t under him anymore, and I needed to find out what happened to the Perrings. Even if one of them was in a coma, I thought I could pay off the whole hospital just to let me in with a PASIV and I could take them under and…explain, I don’t know. I still don’t know what I thought I was gonna do. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t make it out, and dead is dead.”

“Dead is dead,” Eames repeated. 

For a long time, neither of them spoke. There was only the muted chirping of birds from outside, the crackle of ice from Arthur’s glass, and the two of them sitting there in the living room, on opposite sides of the sofa, in Arthur’s quiet blue house in a quiet area where the rest of the neighborhood was less likely to end up caught in the crossfire if anyone ever found him out. 

“Tomatoes,” said Eames. “Explain the tomatoes.”

Arthur’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“You’ve had a bag of revolting-looking peeled tomatoes in your freezer since before I got here. Why?”

“I want to learn to make my own marinara sauce but I keep putting it off. I read online that tomatoes last a lot longer if you freeze them.”

This sounded a little dubious to Eames, but that was beside the point. “What about the straightening irons?”

“Good on shirt collars. My dry cleaner doesn’t always get them right.”

“And the...the belt.” He could hardly get the words out. “Have you been trying to get me to _punish_ you?”

“What? Fuck, _no_ , I just like getting spanked.”

“Oh, thank God,” Eames breathed.

And for an even longer stretch of time, they sat there on opposite ends of the couch, silent. Arthur’s head was bowed and Eames couldn’t keep from staring at him, from thinking of Arthur’s alphabetized collection of records, Arthur’s soft mouth on his chest, Arthur clearing out his closet to make room for Eames in his life without a second thought. “I don’t understand you,” Eames admitted at last.

Arthur laughed, wild. “I told you about my exes. I gave you my rating scale. I let you molest me in my sleep because I knew you wouldn’t push your luck even though you _always_ push your luck.” 

Eames looked away, a response half-forming and reforming in his mind too many times for comfort.

“I brought you home with me and gave you a key before I even let you in the door,” said Arthur, “you fucking _idiot_.”

Eames forced a laugh. “You always have to micromanage everything, don’t you.”

“Micromanaging is my _job_.”

“I’m not one of your jobs.”

“I know,” Arthur exploded. “That makes it worse. If anything worse happened with Amarinder--”

“That wouldn’t have been your fault.”

Arthur was glaring at him. “That’s not what this is about. I know this is hard for you to grasp, but maybe there are some people who don’t want you to get hurt.”

“There are other forgers,” Eames said, trying to be flip.

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t give any of them a house key,” Arthur said fiercely.

“I’d have told you, you know. If you’d asked me who I was working for.”

Arthur’s face tightened. “I needed to give you space after Toledo.”

This was news to Eames. “Did I say that?”

“The job was a mess. You could have died. If I didn’t leave, I would’ve been following you around trying to bubble-wrap you.”

Toledo. Six days of perfection, then Arthur disappearing for some trumped-up reason. 

“For a point man,” Eames declared, “sometimes you’re awful at reading people.”

Arthur scowled. “Tell me what jobs you work and maybe I’ll be better.”

“What, so you can track me and be my long-distance nanny?”

He was ready for Arthur to sigh and call him an asshole, but Arthur only sat up straighter and looked him dead in the eye. “Because I care what happens to you.”

Eames helped himself to a gulp of Arthur’s water, not sure when his mouth had gone dry or why he felt like he’d just been clubbed over the head. “I suppose,” he said, “I could do that. And if you think a job looks like something I should avoid getting involved with, you could just text me your rating on a scale of one to four.”

Arthur’s face did something peculiar that was both a grin and a glare.

Eames sank back in his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is all frighteningly domestic, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to build a doghouse just to put you in it.” Arthur closed the space between them and seized hold of his collar. “This is _self-preservation_ , Eames. I need you to preserve yourself.”

Eames started to say a thousand things at once, but then Arthur was kissing him, pulling him close and not coming up for air until he absolutely had to. Arthur, young and determined and absolute shit at non-work-related communication. Soft-mouthed and smelling like summer.

“I’m going to complain to you through every step of Amarinder’s wish list,” Eames promised, thumbing Arthur’s lower lip.

Arthur grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. “Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://yviwashere.tumblr.com/)


End file.
